I think I broke in my B3... It was a bit of an effort and an endurance run. I played with it for 20 hours and now I think it's broken in.
I was kind of swapping around the B3 and Palio The Way on my blade but while the Palio is a pretty surprisingly cool rubber the B3 is just such a beast.
Even as new it produced so much spin, the topsheet is amazingly spinny, I think it's spinnier than H3 or at least it feels a touch more elastic on how it spits out the ball on big hits, but on small touches too and serve is just so much better than H3.
Now that it's broken in (I think) it's managably fast, granted it's on a Cybershape Carbon with 6g weight in handle so overall it's 195g but it doesn't feel that heavy, since it's balanced by the 6g weight.
I have discovered some nice features of the rubber. It's amazing how it converts rotational energy to forward and forward energy to rotational. I think this is the easiest rubber to deal with short and long pips. They push onto me a fast "empty" ball and I can pull it with B3. This is not an easy shot to do.
On the other hand I get a very spinny slow loop and I can counter it with great speed without giving it much of my own swing speed. Just loosey-goosey.
And I did some countering with it and I have to say I can outperform ZLC blades with MXP on them. Sure, In forehand 2 forehand battle I usually win since my FH is great. But still since it can convert and give back energy so well to the ball I use the opponent's energy and my own and I have placement, depth, and angle while the opponent is happy to do a diagonal FH drive with great power and spin.
The biggest hack of this rubber is the serve. I'm not a particularly amazing server. I'm not bad, not great. I mainly do simple underpin and side-under, just side, maybe hide in a topspin or empty serve. I do all of these with pretty much the same motion which is my weapon of deception. I do an OK job at best normally.
But with B3 maaaaan... The topsheet is very elastic on weak touches so the serves are amazingly spinny without needing a big motion. I can "hide" my serve and make it very very spinny at the same time now. I kid you not I am sure I have gained at least 5-6 points just because of this alone.
While before my serve was from OK to being a liability, today on our match I felt it was my sharpest katana. When I played against the stronger guys I maybe lost 2-3 points per match so maybe 1 point per set. That is crazy. It's worth using B3 just for the serve hack, this is like playing Quake and enabling god mode.
That being said my BH has improved about as much with the V>15 extra as my serves so there is that too. I'm pretty sure I improved about 100TTR points in 3 weeks just by changing back to V>15 and now B3. While 100 doesn't sound much, from 2100 to 2200 it is a big deal. I'm beating 2100 like I'm beating local league players from before.
That's how I felt, the way B3 improved your game. Having used B2P Blue Sponge for the most part, but also having used G1 (and, since it's on my backhand, GoldArc 8 50, which many say is faster than T05, but I'm not sure I agree with that), B3 just doesn't feel like any of them.
And if I'm honest, I've been feeling a bit crazy over here.
The overall sales of B3 seem to be increasing now (I just bought another sheet, as a spare, and to try the 39, so i saw the numbers have increased by 5x), which I think is well deserved, but I'm not seeing many reviews coming out that highlight how significant the improvement is over the previous generation. Anyway, I thought I was going a bit mental...
The service hack as absolutely real.
I've completely changed how I serve recently, to be much closer to how a proper pendulum serve "should" be done. It's a bit inconsistent at the moment, however, when I get it right, it's absolutely disgusting. My GA8 has lovely grip for serving, too, but it's nothing like B3...
I would not say the top sheet feels soft, it just has a lot more raw mechanical grip, especially once broken in, but I can understand why it feels more elastic. It's like the previous generation lost some CoR to damping (through what mechanism, I couldn't tell you), but the overall sense of how much the top sheet deformed and the amount of "bite" on the ball, was very similar, all else being equal. Maybe on some blades or maybe when boosted, the overall setup "feels" softer, but it's by no means soft.
At least I know I'm not crazy!